71–73 of 73 posts
This reminds me of a book called Four Futures, that explores different economic futures that humanity might face, and it just so happens that one of those futures is Rentism, similar to what is described in this piece.
- Egalitarianism and Abundance (Communism)
- Hierarchy and Abundance (Rentism)
- Egalitarianism and Scarcity (Socialism)
- Hierarchy and Scarcity (Exterminism)
Maybe . . . It's not intellectual property that keeps internet companies at the top of the pile, for the most part, unless we are counting trade secrets and domain names as intellectual property (and they are in a sense, but not the sense that requires a government to create an artificial market for them).
All markets are "artificial". Intellectual property is no different to other forms of property in this regard. Both require a government to enforce the laws that create them.
There may be international or extranational markets outside any particular jurisdiction.
A market is an exchange interface. There is a wide range of applicable governing models.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know you're being coy picking the example from your list where the market leader wasn't simply forced out by an even bigger market leader. But in fact we have seen a lot of consolidation in the photographic industry. Back in the days of film everyone had to choose from a select few manufactures of chemical film. but people who created photography had a wide variety of equipment manufacturers to choose from, and tho…
I can take a photo, post it on reddit, and get instant worldwide distribution. So can anyone else. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/ There's a long list of such platforms anyone can upload pictures to. Or they can make their own websites. Anyone can do this. Sorry, I don't see any "choke point".
How many such platforms can you name? How many such platforms would a typical member of the public be able to name? What is the distribution of traffic across such sites? (Hint: Zipf's Law applies.)
Why is it that the information / comms world continuously, since at least the early 20th century, seems to settle on a single dominant provider, or at best, a handful of leading contenders within a field? Telegraph, telephones, television, computer equipment, computer languages, operating systems, social networks, "Web portals", etc., etc.